BLOG POST 6

Before I continue this adventure, it’s necessary I introduce you to even more characters. You already know Kate, Adrian, Kacy, Jake, Ryan, and Walt, but there are a couple more key players in this Prague adventure.

First – my roommates! Our room is set up as 2 bedrooms linked by a little hallway that holds the shower/sink room, the toilet/sink room, and a tiny kitchenette with two hot plates, yet another sink (I'm starting to sense a theme), a mini fridge, and a small kitchen table. I live with Rebecca, also known as the girl in the dark black glasses. This lady is a KOOK rivaling even me on the hyper scale and I love her. When she’s not busy being a ridiculously entertaining and kick-ass journalist/spam writer, she’s either skyping with her dancing boyfriend or hitting the town. Our suitemates are Becca (the “juvie” from Texas I mentioned before who’s surprisingly less like a convict than I expected) and Michelle (chef extraordinaire and future food critic). Together, we’re the ladies of S326 and S328, bound together by an overflowing shower, a critical shortage of toilet paper, and the woes of fitting four girls’ food in one small fridge.

As for the loonies outside my room, I start first and foremost with Alex (and not just because he promises to write my first comment… *wink wink*). This dude was either a comedian or a court jester in his last life because he’s literally ALWAYS making us crack up. He has a flair for the dramatic and a slyly goofy nature that comes out at the most random moments. He’s also quite the stud in his Waldo hat. Then there’s Ian, who I like to think of as the mysterious one. He’s all calm and cool, the traditional Marlboro Texas cowboy, but then he’s always surprising me – turns out he’s a killer dancer, a fishing expert, and a Sherlock-Holmes-with-a-pipe lookalike all in one. Who’da thunk?

Jordan is my polar opposite (at least on the music front). She’s a chain-smoking hotsy totsy little lady, and we all love her to death. Chris is more commonly known as the dude in the cowboy hat. An awesome writer and a ready laugher, he’s all-around pretty darn cool. Jessica and I are the resident non-beer-lovers of the group, but that lady’s even more awesome than me (a hard feat, I know) because she can pop-drop-and-lock like it’s her business. Sign me up to go dancing with this chick ANY day. Stephanie with the forever-forgotten last name is the traditional best friend type: sweet, kind, wholesome, and caring, I know that lady’s got my back no matter what. And finally, the infamous Diego (Adrian’s long-lost roomie from Venezuela): a sarcastic little smartass who somehow keeps me giggling 24/7. He sounds like Puss in Boots and acts like a 7-year-old looking for naughty fun. Dude ROCKS.

This is a lot of the “family” but I’m sure I’ll be introducing more and more characters in the future blogs. For now, though, we’re all set to continue the adventure.


Feb. 5, 2010

After a late night of dancing, I was so awake and full of energy that I stayed up til 6am, updating my blog and facebook photo albums. Perhaps not the wisest of decisions that I’ve made, but as Thursday’s first event was at 1:30pm, I was still able to get a full “night” of sleep.

First stop today was at the AIFS Office to pick up our official Charles University student ID cards. Turns out the ID cards weren’t actually at the office – they herded us there to stagger our arrivals at the actual ID office so as not to overwhelm the staff. I didn’t mind; I LOVE the AIFS Office. There’s free internet, free printing, free water, and free toilets, but even more wonderful is that to get to the 3rd floor office (4th floor for ye Americans who don’t call the ground floor “floor 0”) you can take the CONTINUOUS ELEVATORS! I’m totally taking a video of these contraptions the next time I’m there – they’re mad fun.

They took us on a long roundabout walk to get to the ID place and by the time we arrived we were all a little windswept and red-nosed, making for rather entertaining ID photos. From there we wandered to Wenceslas Square to find the classroom building on Jindrisska Street where the majority of us will have our Czech language courses. On the way we stopped for street sausages, the kind that brought me to foodgasm last time. I decided to be all adventurous and get a different type of sausage – the whiter #13 instead of my usual, redder #11. Worst decision of the day. It wasn’t disgusting but it just wasn’t #11. Boo.

By this time, we’d been walking outside for about an hour and holy crap, were we freezing! Next on the schedule was a walking tour of Prague with ECES but because of the cold about half the people opted out of it. The “ditchers” took off for a local pub and I have to admit, I was mighty tempted to join them. Instead I grabbed some tea and warmed up as best I could.

Before long the tour started and we found ourselves following the tour guide past the Jewish Quarter, over a bridge, and on the funicular for a ride up Petrín Hill. The whole time our tour guide spoke into a microphone about the sights we were passing while we listened via earpieces. I felt all secret agent walking around with an earpiece, like I was Sydney Bristow. Super cool.

We stopped at a bunch of landmarks, my favorite of which was a giant replica of the Eiffel Tower only 2 years younger than the original. The best part of the entire tour, though, was not even planned. There’s a long path down a steep hill that connects the Eiffel Tower to the Castle, and we planned to walk it. Little did we know that yesterday’s brief warm spell combined with today's plunging temperatures had created a new layer of thick, slick ice – so much ice in fact that the stairs on the path were no longer stairs, but just one long, sleek ice slide. We tried to walk down at first, but that just wasn’t gonna happen – one person and then another and another lost their footing and slid, unable to stop or even slow themselves the whole way down. Go and look at the video I posted just prior to this entry and watch closely. They’re sliding down a STAIRCASE! I kept trying to walk upright and each time, within seconds, found myself on my hiney sliding down the hill. Allie was in absolute heaven – somehow she made it back up the hill to slide down all over again! It was quite the adventure, and definitely the best laugh I’ve had in a while.

The remainder of the tour was anticlimactic. I kept bursting into giggles every time I remembered the accidental sledding experience. Everyone had wet bums – some from the snow, others from… well… you can figure it out.

After the tour ended we hit the grocery store to prepare for our first ever FAMILY DINNER! Tonight, Allie was the brave soul who volunteered to be head chef. She made chicken curry, Jake made wild rice, Kacy made fresh salad with cheese and apples, and I steered clear of the kitchen rather than risk setting something on fire. Everyone contributed: I brought dessert, Kate and Adrian brought wine, Diego brought champagne, Walt and Alex provided the kitchen and utensils, and we all took part in the glory known as family dinner. It reminded me of last August’s pre-going-abroad “family dinner” with Lucy, Sarah, TKaps, and Mikey. :)

The dinner was a brilliantly improvised success. We drank wine from beer mugs, mixed the salad in a shopping bag, and even shared plates (*cough cough Alex and Diego*). It was ridiculously delicious – Allie, you are a kick-ass cook! After dinner we cleaned up and randomly decided to watch the cave episode of “Planet Earth” on a laptop. All in all, it was a wonderful, happy, gloriously kooky night.


Friday, Feb. 6, 2010

Today I woke up bright and early to pack for the AIFS weekend trip to Moravia, a region in the southern part of the Czech Republic. By 10:30am, we were all loaded on the buses and on our way. It was a long drive with only one real stop, at the 13th century era church in the small town of Tišnov. The church itself was as grand and ornate as it seems all are in Europe, but what really made it stand out from the rest was its epically beautiful cloister. I can only imagine how beautiful it must be in the summer because even in the freezing cold with snow covering every surface it was still breathtaking. I could just imagine myself hundreds of years in the past, meandering serenely along it in a flowing gown. It was like I was on a movie set, but better because of course this was real life!

The only downside to Tišnov was the fact that we weren’t allowed to use the toilets there – apparently the pipes were frozen! Many of us ladies had to GO, so the final 30-minute ride to the hotel in Brno was a tense, sit-on-your-foot, don’t-you-dare-make-me-giggle adventure. We arrived, got our room keys, and dashed upstairs.

The meeting time for dinner was 6pm so we had about 2 hours to explore Brno on our own. A couple of us headed out for a walk only to discover that we were in the boondocks of the city. Our street had one grocery store and a bunch of shady-looking unmarked buildings. We walked for a while and found a whole slew of bars/casinos in a row, plus one random second-hand shop that seemed to specialize in 80s prom dresses. We eventually entered a bar and greeted the waitress in Czech. Ohh, was she pissed. Honestly, we said two words in Czech and her response was “****. English.” I actually don’t know WHAT word she said there, but it was short and harsh and could easily have been a Czech swear word.

We got a round of drinks and just hung out, biding our time til dinner, and at 6pm we were back on Bus #1 on the way to the restaurant. Turns out it was a full hour away, so to stay entertained we sang along to Kacy’s I-pod (“she’s cheer captain and I’m on the bleachers!” :P). Finally we arrived at the Templar Order Restaurant in the town of Ĉejkovice. This place was amazing. Back in the 12th century when the Templar Order was flourishing, it ordered the construction of hundreds of miles of underground, stone tunnels. Today, this branch of the tunnels is half restaurant-half wine cellar, where they store casks of aging wine alongside “archives” of the best wines from every year. First we ate, and man oh man was the food amazing. I had a pork/almond dish with the most hearty, delicious mashed potatoes I’ve ever tasted. Granted it was almost 8pm by the time the food arrived, so I was hungry enough to find even poop on a stick delicious, but it was nonetheless a great meal. We sat at 2 long tables arranged Hogwarts style and decked out with wine glasses and cloth napkins, the whole shebang.

We then went on a tour of the wine cellars, following a petite, grandmotherly Czech woman as she narrated in Czech and Jana translated in English. There is just so much wine down there! A couple of the casks are ridiculously large – one could hold an entire band with room to spare. The coolest thing of all, though, was how much the tour guide looked like Grandma Clem. The resemblance was just uncanny – it really made me wonder whether I have some Czech in my blood.

The tour ended and the wine tasting began. The waiters brought out bottles upon bottles of white and red wines, representing various vineyards and multiple years. I had a glass of white wine and stopped, but most people went to town. We were there for at least an hour and by the time we got back on the bus, people were DRUNK. I thought the bus ride here was crazy; the bus ride back was even CRAZIER.

We got to the hotel and while most people hurried off to the bar for more drinks, I called it a night and within minutes fell fast asleep.


Sat., Feb. 7, 2010

This morning started off on the right note with a killer breakfast buffet. The oranges were amazing and even Kristi (the official Rice carb-ivore) would have approved of the massive bread selection. I had some sort of shmere called “hazelnut cocoa cream” that just blew my mind. It looked like chocolate/vanilla pudding and tasted like heaven – I’ve got to see if I can get some in Prague!

At 10am we pulled out and drove about 40-min to the town of Slavkov where we toured the battlefield of Austerlitz. In 1805, French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte fought his most famous battle here against the Austrian Emperor Francis and the Russian Tsar Alexander. Appropriately, it is known as “The Battle of Three Emperors.” Today, Austerlitz is just a long, rolling field with a large memorial (called the Memorial of Peace) on Prace Hill in the center of the battlefield. There’s a small but intriguing museum beside it that uses 80s-era audiovisuals to tell the story of the battle and Napoleon’s decisive victory. People seemed to especially love the gift shop here. Rebecca, for one, bought a dagger (a replica, not a sharp one), which I of course stole and ran off with to take silly pictures and terrify people.

The next stop was Gregor Mendel’s Garden and Museum, but after parking, unloading, and reaching the entrance, we discovered it was closed. Oops! We’d rushed to stay on schedule but now had way more time than anticipated, a full 2 hours to get lunch before meeting for a walking tour of Brno. My group grabbed 2 tables at a little café in the center of town and took our time eating.

One thing that I’ve noticed about the Czech Republic is that at pretty much every restaurant, you receive a bread basket and then get charged based on the number of pieces of bread you consume. A piece averages only about 25cents, but the “no free bread + no free refills” mentality made me an unhappy camper for a while. I’m getting used to it slowly but surely, but one thing I am NOT and will NEVER get used to is the dearth of toilets in Europe! It seems that “public restrooms” are a foreign concept, and even when you find toilets, you usually have to pay for them. It’s rarely more than 5kc (about 25cents) but it still feels unnatural to have to PAY to pee!

Another thing that’s different is that most buildings are barely (if at all) heated. I find that I’m chilly just about wherever I go, especially on tours where we spend most time either outside or in absolutely bone-chillingly cold churches, caves, passageways, etc. My dorm room tends to be chilly too, but thanks to a ridiculously warm comforter, that’s rarely a problem.

Anyway, back to Brno. At 3pm we met our tour guide in the main square and set off to see the town. Mom would’ve liked this lady – she was quick and to the point, and she didn’t wait around for stragglers (“slow people don’t get stuff”). At one point I stayed back with about 1/3 of the group to take pictures, and she and the rest of the group just disappeared. We searched for them for maybe 10 minutes before calling people still WITH her to get directions to rendezvous with them again. The lady also embraced another Rice family tradition: climbing. It seemed that any time we found stairs we went up them. We didn’t have time to go to the tip-top of Brno’s main cathedral, but I can bet that if we did, she would have led the charge up the stairs. All in all, it was a tiring but also great introduction to the town.

Brno is the second largest city in the Czech Republic (Prague is #1) but isn’t even close to being a bustling metropolis. It’s a quiet, kind of gloomy town with communist-era utilitarian buildings interspersed with beautiful, old-time buildings. There’s a constant layer of smog hovering over the city and a generally somber air about the people. While I was there, I found myself missing Prague.

The tour ended where it began, and at this point the group dispersed. A couple people headed off to find an ice-skating rink (an endeavor that ended with them far out of town and turned away from the rink because the ice was “bad”), but as today was my first day not wearing an ankle wrap since I sprained it, I decided it was better to be safe than sorry, and I didn’t go with them. Instead, Diego, Chris, and I returned to the Cathedral hoping to climb to the top of the spire but by the time we got there, it was already closed. We wandered around a bit before returning to the main square and beginning the long trek back to the hotel. In retrospect, trying to navigate an unfamiliar city in the dark was probably not a wise decision. What should have been a 15 minute walk turned into an hour-long adventure involving multiple pit stops to ask for directions, an illegal tram ride (we couldn’t find the ticket machine but we snuck on anyway), and aching feet all around. Thank god I had walked around the hotel area yesterday, because when we got to the right part of town I was able to lead us back. It felt so good to walk into the heat of the lobby!

We warmed up for a bit and then went to dinner at the hotel restaurant. I was absolutely exhausted from the day and I had a chill that I just couldn’t shake, so after dinner I went to my room to take a hot shower, write a bit, and then pass out.


Sunday, Feb. 8, 2010

I woke up this morning way too early, just not tired anymore. I wasted a bit of time but still got downstairs a full hour and a half before departure time. It actually worked out – there was no line for the internet AND I didn’t have to fight the AIFS hordes for breakfast. Morning success!

By 9:45 everyone was gathered in the lobby, packed and ready to go. Our first stop: Gregor Mendel’s garden and museum, which had been closed yesterday. The garden itself was unspectacular: just a snow-covered plot within the monastery’s walls. The museum, too, was a stretch, as it covered all of Mendel’s life rather than just his science-altering gardening hobby. I saw his original peas (they look oddly like kibble nowadays) and his spectacles, and I read a lot of signs about his contribution to genetics, but probably my favorite part of the museum was the gift shop where they had some hilarious shirts. I also loved the fact that I can now say with absolute sincerity that I’ve been to a “Pea Museum” (ha-ha!).

After another hour on the bus we arrived at the coolest part of Moravia so far: the Moravian Karst system, a series of underground caves replete with rivers, soaring holes that allow smidgeons of light to peek through from the far-distant surface, stalactites and stalagmites (some joining to form columns), and a multitude of other beautiful sights. It was about a 15-minute walk on a VERY ice path to get to the cave entrance, but at least THIS path was level!

Soon we were descending through narrow cave tunnels approaching the vaulted ceiling of the cave’s first chamber. From there we continued to walk, passing a vast underground lake and many rock formations that seemed to defy gravity before we finally emerged from the depths of the earth only to find ourselves at the bottom of a massive crater ringed by snowy trees far above. It was absolutely breathtaking.

We returned underground and within minutes found ourselves at a dock, a boat waiting to transport us along a narrow, winding, underground river. I boarded the first boat and off we went, so close to the rocks that from time to time I found myself leaning to get out of the way of rocks in our path. It felt like a ride at Disney World (Pirates of the Caribbean, perhaps) but 100x cooler because it was REAL. Eventually we emerged from the cave and docked in the sunlight, but the ride had been so amazing that I didn’t want it to be over.

The walk back to the main area was an adventure in and of itself. The icy path had somehow gotten icier, and a couple of us had fairly spectacular wipeouts. I pulled a “Cool Running” and took Adrian down with me when I toppled, but Alex’s fall was by far the most entertaining. I have no idea how this happened but he did a sort of sideways flip before landing, sending his inhaler skittering out of his pocket and away on its own. He looked up, his Waldo hat askew and his face is a state of absolute befuddlement about how he’d reached the ground, and it was possibly one of the most hilarious, “America’s Funniest Home Videos” moments I’ve ever witnessed.

Luckily we got back to the buses unscathed, and after a quick lunch we were off to our final stop in Moravia, the small town of Adamov. Here we visited a church to see a beautiful carved altar from the 16th century, but it was so cold in the church that I could barely appreciate it.

Finally we were back on the bus and heading “home” to Prague. It was an uneventful ride, and within hours we were back to the dorm, ready to unpack and hit the hay in anticipation of tomorrow’s first day of Czech class.